Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols 2023

December 24, 2023

Micah 5:2-5

The satire in Peter Gabriel’s song Big Time is often missed. From college basketball to professional wrestling, it’s bumper music for success. “I’m on my way, I’m making it, big time.” It’s the American dream: you can be anything you want to be; you can make it big.

There’s a religious dimension to the song that fits perfectly the modern obsession with bigger and better churches. “And I will pray to a big god as I kneel in the big church.” Then later, “And my heaven will be a big heaven, and I will walk through the front door.”

The way God works couldn’t be more different. It’s captured in the carol we sang earlier: O Little Town of Bethlehem. When the prophet Micah foretold the birthplace of the Savior, he emphasized that the Messiah would be born in a place unlikely, tiny, obscure: “But you, O Bethlehem … who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for Me One who is to be Ruler.”

We’re not immune to despising what is small and obscure. Many are enamored with the proximity to power this area offers. It’s an illusion. Washington holds no power, not in the things that matter. God chooses the little things to confound the wise, the strong, the mighty.

So the birthplace of Jesus, Bethlehem, was a small town. But there’s more to it than that. In the Bible, little signifies insignificance, lack of privilege, undesirability; little is synonymous with poor, weak, despised.

The Lord Jesus is not just born in a little town, He’s born to impoverished parents. And the people in town, perhaps knowing the strange circumstances of Mary’s conception, will not share a guest room with them. It’s not that there was no vacancy in the Hampton Inn. These are Joseph’s own relatives! From His birth, Jesus is despised.

It had to be this way. This is what mankind has done with God: despised, disregarded, derogated Him. Christ’s coming as a Little One in little circumstances presages His entire demeanor of self-renunciation. He doesn’t appear among men as God and Lord, exercising “leadership” by gathering to Himself power and wealth. He comes in the form of a servant.

Jesus maintains this “littleness” to the end. He owns nothing. His friends flee from Him; one of them betrays Him. His execution is the type reserved for the most wretched.

Is it even possible for us to celebrate Christmas as His disciples, in warm homes filled with luxuries and a strong desire to enhance our own positions and portfolios?

Or perhaps you already feel low and alone, and are tempted by bitterness. The disciple of the little Child confesses this: “I am small and despised, yet I do not forget Your precepts” (Ps 119.141).

If God made Himself little, how can we seek to make ourselves great? He who is great became little for us. He calls us to imitate Him: Jesus says, “Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it” (Lk 18.17). Let us receive Him as little children, i.e., as those who cannot supply for themselves what is needed. For

God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.” [1 Cor. 1.27-31]

Here is the great mystery of Christmas: That the Little One, born in poverty and shame, is God Himself. When Micah foretells the place of His birth, Bethlehem, he tells us that the Little One is at the same time “from of old, from ancient days.” The ancient One, the Eternal One, enters time. The Creator becomes a creature. God becomes man.

Why? To bring to nothing the proud, the “big time,” and to bring peace to all of this world’s little ones. That’s how Micah concludes his prophecy about the Christ: “And He shall be their peace.” In the Hebrew language, peace is more than quiet, or even the absence of war. Peace is when everything is as it should be, healthy, sound, whole.

The Little One announces this Peace when, after swapping the swaddling cloths for grave cloths, He rises from the dead, folds them up, appears to His disciples, and says, “Peace to you.” He forgives their sins and tells them to forgive others. That’s the way of the Little One, and of all us little ones who follow Him. Let us revel in being little, unknown, unsuccessful, and He will raise us up in His good time. +INJ+